Supernatural Shorts
by Celesma
Summary: Series of unrelated SPN drabbles and flashfics (basically nothing over 500 words here), centered on all ships, characters and genres.
1. The Thousand

**The Thousand  
**

Sam's both amused and disturbed to catch a glimpse of Dean through the window of the pet store. They'd just finished casing a strip mall for any clues regarding their newest case (a rash of identical suicides, suspected to be the work of witches), and Sam had decided to break long enough to grab them some burgers. When he stepped out of the adjacent McDonald's, he just happened to glance over and there was Dean, smiling and petting the baby bunnies huddled together for warmth in one of the glass-walled pens.

It's strange, because not once has he ever seen Dean go into (or express the desire to go into) a pet store. Dean's not only allergic to most anything with fur, but he doesn't even like _dogs_, which Sam finds totally batty.

"Aww," he says as he walks in and stands by the pen. "Does Dean wike the wittle wabbits?" Not that he has a problem with that – he thinks it's cute. But it's always fun to poke away at the house of cards that is Dean's futilely guarded sense of machismo.

"Who wouldn't love these adorable fuzzballs," Dean says without removing his hand, or even looking at Sam. He's all eyes for the baby bunnies, who nuzzle against his fingers and grind their teeth in quiet contentment as he continues to stroke their fur.

"Since when do you like bunnies?"

"Since always. Seriously, what's _not_ to like? Better than those domesticated hellhounds."

Sam ignores the jab at his favorite animal. "Well, they don't really _do _anything, you know. Just sit there and eat, mostly."

"Exactly. They get to eat hay, and sleep all day, and poop wherever they want, and maybe even have some wild bunny sex if they're lucky enough to come home to a friend. They get to be innocent, and happy." Dean sounds almost _wistful_.

"For the ones in here, maybe," Sam demurs. "The wild ones only live two or three years, tops. Too many predators, illnesses, or – "

He wishes he hadn't said anything when Dean's smile fades. "Yeah. I know. It all comes down to circumstance, huh? One little guy gets to die fat and happy, another one spends its whole life running and hiding from all the goddamn _elil_."

He scratches between the ears of a tawny-colored runt, then turns away. As he paces briskly through the store's front door, Sam's not sure that he's talking about rabbits anymore.

* * *

A/N: _Elil_ is a Lapine word meaning "rabbit enemies" (or literally, "the Thousand"). (In my headcanon, Dean Winchester keeps a beat-up copy of _Watership Down_ hidden in the Impala [and if I may wax even nerdier than I already am for a moment, I have to say that he and Sam share some parallels to Hazel and Fiver, at least in the earlier, healthier stage of their relationship]. Dean's always seemed surprisingly well-read to me, and since he _is_ allergic to cats and doesn't like dogs, I could see him being a proud rabbit owner in a timeline where he wasn't raised as a hunter. Then again, this could very well be the rabbit owner in me projecting.)


	2. Strong

A/N: Takes place after the beginning of S08, but before the Trials.

* * *

**Strong**

Dean awakens, shivering and sweating, from another nightmare.

It's been over three years since his time in hell, and he doesn't really dream about it that much anymore. But it seems that, lately, the dreams have been returning to him in full force – and with one very new, disturbing detail, one that's enough to make him almost cry out in horror every time he returns to the waking world.

He turns over to look at Sam, who's sharing the bed with him. His little brother is sleeping peacefully, undisturbed by any memories of his own time in hell. Dean envies him so much, not just because Sam is strong enough to put all that behind him, but because Sam is just _strong_ – strong enough to forgive the people who've hurt him or let him down (like Castiel, who took down Death's wall and left Sam a gibbering wreck for almost a year, or Dean, who hasn't stopped giving him shit since Purgatory), strong enough to have faith that there's some kind of light waiting at the end of this tortuous road of misery, strong enough (even) to give up the hunter's lifestyle without incurring the crippling sense of guilt that would have haunted Dean to his dying days.

Every time Sam fucked up or betrayed him in some way, Dean has chosen to stand by him, support him, love him – and yet, it's still so hard to forgive him.

Maybe that's why, when he dreams about hell now, he dreams that all of his torture victims have Sam's face. Or why he seems to do everything in his power now to push him away and be as off-putting as possible (to make Sam think that he doesn't even_ like_ him all that much, when he's in fact far too emotionally frail to ever be able to live without him).

And –_ whattaya know_ – Sam continues to forgive him that, too.

"Sammy," he croaks, and his little brother turns over blearily in sleep, barely aware of him but still reaching out with warm arms to hold him.

"It's okay, Dean," Sam mutters, his eyes still tightly closed, as if lost in a dream of his own. "It's okay." Dean lets Sam pull him close, and wonders who's really the older brother here.


	3. Costume

A/N: Theme vaguely inspired by the date. Happy Halloween!

* * *

**Costume**

He appears human, but so often he still feels like he's wearing a costume. To experience one's Grace enshrouded _(confined)_ within a miniscule body of flesh, reduced to maneuvering four limbs when he still possesses a queer tactile awareness of the other three hundred – all of which are thrice as long as Dean's Impala – certainly lends strength to the "wearing a meatsuit" expression he's heard being bandied about ever since he was first stationed on earth. He still walks with a ramrod-straight posture with his hands jammed in his pockets, trying to maintain the human body's fragile sense of balance; still responds to human conversation in a gravelly monotone that he knows isn't _quite right_ but can't seem to correct; still regards his surroundings with a perpetual squint, because human sight (along with all their other faculties) is shockingly inadequate, unable to register even a fraction of the colors and details he was capable of appreciating when he was a seraph.

Castiel wonders if – knowing and feeling the way he does – he will ever be able to truly integrate into his Father's favorite creation.

When he approaches the Winchesters with his concerns, Dean gives him a sidelong glance that Castiel knows from long experience is meant to convey amused irritation.

"Don't you think you're overthinking it a little? I mean, there is that whole_ fake it 'till you make it_ thing. Wear the mask long enough and you become the mask, and all that?"

"I'm not sure I understand," Castiel says sadly.

Sam claps a hand heavily on his shoulder. "What he's trying to say, Cas, is that you're plenty human enough for us. No matter how you feel, or act – or even what you used to be." He speaks from a place of authority, his tone serious and sagely.

"Yeah. What he said, ya featherhead." And when Dean leans forward and places his mouth on Castiel's, lips and breath connecting on a wave of moist heat, he can almost swear that it's true.


	4. Do Your Best

A/N: I personally hated Dean's speech to Kevin in "Devil May Care," so I rewrote it. Because I can. (This is actually closer to 600 words, but it's the shortest I could make it without losing the message that I intended to get across.)

* * *

**Do Your Best**

"Look, Kevin. I get that you're upset about your mother. I really do. But – "

"No." Kevin's eyes, glassy with tears now, nevertheless shine with reproach and grief. "No, you really don't. You'll just say whatever you need to say to keep me on as your lapdog. You did it when you kept pushing me to help you lock up the demons – which you ended up not even doing in the end; thanks a _hell of a lot_ for sacrificing my mom and girlfriend for nothing, by the way – and it's what you're doing now."

Dean sighs heavily – not at Kevin's completely warranted reaction (and he agrees, his buck-up speeches are nothing if not tense and fake-sounding), but with wearied irritation at the shitty situation they're all in.

"You're wrong, man," he says, more gently now. "I _do_ know what you're going through. Sam and I... we've lost family to demons, too." He swallows hard, moistens his lips. It's still hard to talk about it, even with this wiry little kid that he's – admittedly – grown attached to over the past year. "When I was four, and Sam was just a baby... a demon killed our mom. Twenty years later, that same demon came back to kill Sam's girlfriend. And then he – killed Dad." Each admission is like a punch in the gut.

"You never told me that." Kevin sounds both sorrowful and accusatory.

"I know. I'm not bringing it up now to make you stuff your feelings. You have every right to be upset." Dean pauses, unsure of how to continue. He feels there's an entire universe of things still left to apologize for, and it makes him faint and dizzy.

"Look. I've been treating you like a tool, and I'm sorry for that. I pray to God – if the guy's not a total rat bastard – that your mom's alive and well. But I can't have you running off half-cocked and getting yourself killed. Because I _do_ consider you my family. And me – Sammy, any of us – we'd die for you." He shakes his head slowly. Even when he's speaking from the heart, he still feels the touch of manipulation – of non-apology, and the further need to repent – in his words. "And there _will _be justice for your mom and Channing. We'll pump Crowley for all the intel he's got, and then we're icing the bastard."

Kevin is openly crying now. "How can I believe anything you say?" His shoulders start shaking uncontrollably, and Dean pulls him into a hug.

"You just gotta trust me."

"My mom... I miss my mom..."

Dean hugs him tighter, as the boy begins sobbing. "I'm sorry, Kevin. I wish I could tell you it gets better. But Cas was right. This is something that you're in for for life. And me and Sam... we'll do the best we can to support you." He tries not to think about Crowley, and the hex bag, and Sarah. About the newest life the Winchesters have ruined, and whether anything they've ever done has been the right thing. "We'll do our best," he says again.


	5. Roadside Amusements

A/N: Inspired by some of the long-ass road trips my boyfriend and I have taken out West. Most of this describes my actual experience on the road.

* * *

**Roadside Amusements**

Sometimes, Sam reflects as he and Dean find themselves traveling over the same endless stretch of blacktop for maybe the millionth time, gazing out onto a terrain he's personally dubbed A Whole Lot Of Nothing, road trips are pretty damn boring.

He tries to pass the time with research and reading – his Kindle has saved him from ennui-inspired suicide on more than one occasion – but there's only so much sitting on his ass and _sameness_ he can take. Maybe he'd feel a bit more engaged if Dean would let him drive, but Dean never does that. He figures it has less to do with Dean wanting to reserve the privileged title of "Baby's Driver" for himself and more to do with not wanting to wear Sam out, but Sam doesn't care. It's got to go_ some_ ways towards breaking up the eternal montage of Waffle Houses and crappy hotels and (literally crappy) gas station bathrooms.

Then one day – as they're headed to Florida's west coast to help out the owners of a haunted hotel – Dean detours off of I-40 onto historic Route 66, citing that "the Winchesters deserve a little vacation, don't ya think?," and Sam almost bursts into the Hallelujah Chorus for joy. They visit places like the Meramec Caverns of Missouri, the sprawling Black Mountains of Arizona, and the famous Blue Swallow Motel of New Mexico (basically, all the fun places Dad was always too myopically preoccupied with exterminating evil to take them as kids), and Dean buys him tacky little roadside presents and eats something other than freaking Waffle House for once.

The last (and best, in his opinion) stop is Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, where ten Cadillacs have been planted into the desert floor like daisies, their bodies decorated with layers upon layers of spraypaint graffiti. Dean embraces his inner hooligan by picking up one of the many abandoned spray cans and layering obscene pictures over the crazy designs festooning the cars. Sam does the same, but with an especially wicked edge: he graffitis the initials **D + C** down the side of each Cadillac.

Dean walks over, frowns at his handiwork. "I don't get it."

"Really?" Sam can't contain his grin as he pulls out his phone and snaps a picture. "I thought it was obvious. _Dean and Cas_. Thought you'd want to send your boyfriend a souvenir of our trip."

Dean's face turns bone-white and his eyes grow wide as dinner plates. "You do that and I'll – "

"Just did. Oh, and look, he texted back. _Sam, I don't understand what I'm looking at_. Do you want the honors of – "

As Dean's shoving him to the ground, threatening to pound him into tiny pieces that he's then going to pound into even_ tinier_ pieces, Sam thinks that maybe road trips are actually pretty damn awesome.


	6. Damned Spot

I got inspired to write this after re-reading a certain scene involving a certain priest in the manga Trigun Maximum (one of my favorite mangas _ever_, and another series that deals with themes of morality and the nature of right and wrong).

I have no idea why I like writing guilty!Dean so much.

* * *

**Damned Spot**

He's surrounded by whiteness, surrounded by bodies, and the weight of his sins bears down on him in a suffocating press.

This nightmare is new for Dean. The bodies – once claimed by demons, now dead by his hand – are arranged in a neat circle around him. He surveys them slowly, his skin breaking out in gooseflesh as he contemplates the lives he has taken. In death, the demonic influence over these people has been utterly extinguished. Here he sees a businesswoman, there a recent college graduate. A farmer. A mailman.

What were their names? Did they have families, people who would miss them? Were they mothers, fathers, grandparents –

He wants to scream, thinking about it.

He looks at his hands. They are soaked with blood: thick and coppery and damning._ Like Lady Macbeth. Out, damned spot –_

And then: _Oh god, so many of them I killed so many of them –_

He's vaguely aware of the flap of wings behind him, and without turning, he knows it's Cas. Cas comes not only when he calls, but also when he needs him. As he does so very much now.

Dean speaks with a calmness he doesn't feel _–_ not to explain anything to Cas (who already knows), but to himself.

"If you wanna look at it logically, I'm saving dozens of lives for every meatsuit I take down. But those lives... they're only hypothetical. They don't exist in the here and now." _I don't get to sit on the playground bench and watch the families, the __**kids**__ – not anymore._ "In the here and now, I only see the bodies. The murdered innocents. Not meatsuits. _People_." He pauses, and now his voice breaks. "They didn't deserve it."

"You wanted to save them too," Castiel says, reappearing in front of him, and it isn't a question. "You wanted to save all of them."

"Yeah... but I gotta be the strong one. For Sammy, for _everyone_. I have to be the one making the hard choices. And when I die – " Dean swallows hard. "When I die, I'm going right back where you found me."

"You can't save everyone, Dean." Castiel raises his hands and places them over Dean's, carefully. When Dean looks down, his hands are a soft, glowing pink – wonderfully whole and scrubbed clean. "You always did your best. And even when you didn't... our Father forgives all sins. There is nothing you can do to make Him love you less."

"You don't even know if the guy's real, Cas."

"No. I only have my faith." Castiel locks gazes with him. "But could you also believe, Dean, if I asked you to? At least for now?"

Dean thinks, the seconds ticking by like hours, the angel's fingers a beautiful weight in his hands.

"For you I could," he says finally, and he rests his head on Castiel's shoulder, counting each comforting heartbeat that drums against his chest, thinking of a salvation that will never come.


	7. Abomination

A/N: The companion to Damned Spot, featuring guilty!Sam.

* * *

**Abomination**

All he's ever done – all he's ever _been_ – is a mistake. Mistake after mistake after mistake, woven into the fabric of his being, like corrupted strands of DNA determining the moral course of his soul. Sam may have once declared himself a member of Team Free Will, but that gets harder to believe in every day, especially as his body continues to deteriorate: the physical reminder of his spiritual rot.

The first thing he had done wrong was to be born (and that wasn't even him being dramatic). Old Yellow Eyes and Gordon Walker had reminded him of that often enough, in the beginning. And now later – _much_ later, when he thought he'd put it all behind him – the intimate knowledge that he was evil was resurfacing. Sam can't help but mentally catalogue his recent sins as he lies in bed, over and over again, like a man obsessively preoccupied with solving a math problem. Sins like letting Dean down, not looking for him and Cas in Purgatory (or even _Kevin_, the poor kid), making the choice to give up the Life altogether. Combined with his new_ (dickish) _attitude towards Dean, it's no wonder his older brother retreated into the arms of a vampire.

Of course, he'd responded to the news like a petulant brat. _Knocking Dean out and sending a man fresh out of the psychiatric ward after his only friend? A friend who's a dangerous vampire? Who __**does**__ that? If anyone's responsible for Martin's death, it's me. All because I was jealous –_

He cringes when he remembers leaving Amelia's bed, shortly after that. _And to top it all off, I helped a woman cheat on her husband. I never even should have been involved with her in the first place. Didn't you learn anything from Dean and Lisa, Sam?_

His only salvation now is in the Trials. Even if it kills him, Sam'll see them through. He _has_ to. For the good of the entire world, and that of his brother. Dean may still love him (and Sam isn't even entirely certain of _that_), but if Sam can make sure that he never has to torture himself by killing another meatsuit, Sam will make it happen. Because Dean deserves to be happy _–_ with or without him.

And after all, can't evil still serve a purpose?

Sam may believe that he's doomed, but he still believes in God. He remembers stories of his heroes: King Arthur, Galahad, seekers of the Holy Grail. Lancelot cuckolded his king, but still served his cause. Judas Iscariot was a traitor who got Christ killed, but because of him, Christ could save repentant sinners. Sam takes a strange kind of comfort in that.

After all, it's the most an abomination like him can hope for.


	8. Team Heaven

A/N: Spoilers for "Holy Terror." The end of that episode gave me many bad feels and I just needed to get this out of my system.

* * *

**Team Heaven**

"I'm dead," Kevin says, curled up into a fetal position on the floor of some dark place that could be Heaven or hell for all he knows. "I'm dead, I died, I'm dead." He's still reeling from the memory of the searing heat that he knows must have melted his eyeballs in his head (which would have been totally cool if it wasn't, you know, _real life_, and happening to _him_). "Figures one of those Winchester bastards would be the one to end me – "

A shaft of light breaks through the gloominess and there's a figure kneeling over him. Kevin looks up fearfully. Then: "Holy shit, _Castiel_? Dude, _please_ tell me you're here to revive me. Or actually, you know what, _don't._ I'm probably much safer here." He pauses when Cas rolls his eyes skyward and sighs heavily, in a gesture that strikes Kevin as way too human for him. "Uh. This _is_ Heaven, right? Who else is here?" Maybe he can find his mom, or Channing –

"Got one out of two," a rough female voice replies over his shoulder. Kevin turns around to see a tall woman with long brown hair standing over him. She's holding a shotgun and she looks like she could twist him into a pretzel with her bare hands if she wanted. "Welcome to the afterlife, kiddo. The name's Harvelle," she says, extending a firm hand for him to shake. "Ellen Harvelle. And this here is my daughter, Jo."

The girl called Jo smiles at him. She's bearing a Glock and also looks like she could twist him into a salty bread product. "Nice to meet you, Kevin."

Kevin blinks in disbelief. "You know my name?"

"Oh, I think a lot of people up here know who you are, honey," Ellen says, and her voice is warm now. "And, well – I guess everybody else will introduce themselves, in time."

Kevin looks at the other assembled people with mounting confusion. There's a lot of them: a gruff middle-aged looking white dude, an even gruffer-looking middle-aged black dude, some guy dressed as a cop, and another guy with a weird mullet haircut. And they've _all_ got weapons.

Talk about your motley crews.

"You're not Castiel," he says finally, and he knows he must sound dumb, but he really doesn't know what else to say.

"No. I get that a lot, though." Not-Castiel threads a hand through his hair and grins, somewhat bashfully. "My name's Jimmy Novak. And we could use the help of a prophet. Specifically, to take back Heaven and kick Metatron's ass."

Kevin looks around again, staring at each face in turn. Maybe it's because he's already dead, or maybe it's because of something in their faces, but he already feels far safer with them than he ever did with the Winchesters. He returns Jimmy's grin.

Weirder shit has happened to him, after all.

"Oh, count me _in_."


End file.
